India Club is pleased to present - “Sunrise Industries Speaker Series” - A series of talks on various sunrise industries of India to showcase Indian successes in these sectors.

We hope these talks will also serve to inspire future entrepreneurs and leaders in these fields and looking to do business in India.

The first of this series will be a talk on “Doing Business in India / Indian IT industry” by Mr Ashok Soota, Chairman & MD, Mindtree Consulting on Tuesday 1st February at 5.30 pm. Mr Soota, who is a past president of the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII), is one of the visionary business leaders who have played a critical role in the success of the Indian IT industry.

Update: Report on the eventThe second talk of the series has an equally illustrious business leader in the form of “India’s Biotech Queen", Ms Kiran Mazumdar Shaw, Chairman and MD of Biocon Ltd. Ms Shaw’s pioneering efforts in biotechnology have played a key role in drawing global recognition for the Indian biotechnology industry. Ms Shaw will address the Club on “The Indian Biotechnology Industry” on Wednesday, 2nd February at 3 pm.

The India Club members had the privilege of listening to Ashok Soota, Founder President of Mindtree Consulting on Doing Business in India / Indian IT industryon 1st February 2005.

Mr Soota is a well know IT industry leader & Past President of the Confederation of Indian Industry. He shared his experience of building two world class companies in the IT industry in his talk.

Mr Soota began by giving an an overview of the Indian economy in general and the Indian IT / BPO industry in particular. He pointed out that the reasons responsible for the success of the Indian IT industry (cost, quality, disruptive business model) were now driving the growth of other knowledge based industries in India such as pharmaceuticals, biotechnology, design / R&D and healthcare

However the Indian IT industry does face challenges such as Culture & communication, Managing change and Account management. Mr Soota also highlighted the trends in the Indian outsourcing story such as

Increasing role of MNCs

Average age profile of management teams decreasing

Reverse BOTs

Increasing customer expectations

A key positive for the Indian IT industry remains that by 2020 the working population surplus for the country would be 47 million, which would be the highest in the world.

Mr Soota also spoke about the barriers that earlier held back Indian manufacturing but which were now being gradually removed. Mr Soota gave examples to show that India was showing great strides in technology/ engineering led manufacturing and opined that mass manufacturing would also pick up. Mr Soota concluded his talk by saying that India was dramatically transforming from a somnolent to a dancing elephant.

Mr Soota’s talk was followed by a lively Q&A session with the audience. Of the many issues raised one of the most repeated was how Indian IT industry needs to get its act together in outsourcing for non-English markets too.

India has made good progress during the past decade in constructively engaging key countries and regional organizations around the world. This has been made possible as India countries to translate its economic potential into actual performance, and pursues strong and creditable national security policies.

At this juncture, there is a strong case for India and Japan to broaden and deepen economic and political engagement with a view to enhancing strategic depth and leverage of each country. The two countries had envisaged “global partnership” in the year 2000. It is time to give greater substance to this partnership the fact that India is the single largest recipient of Japanese Overseas Development assistance (ODA) is a strong signal from Japan but it needs to be complemented by more robust economic and political relations to achieve the strategic engagement.